In This Issue

General Community News

Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) Beta 1 Released.

“The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the first beta release of Ubuntu 12.10 Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products.

Codenamed "Quantal Quetzal", 12.10 continues Ubuntu's proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

For the client, this release now has a consolidated Ubuntu image. There is no longer a traditional CD sized image, DVD or alternate image, but rather a single 800MB Ubuntu image that can be used from USB or DVD. This change does not affect Ubuntu Server, which remains a traditional CD sized image.

With Ubuntu 12.10, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Lubuntu, and Ubuntu Studio also reached Beta 1 status today. These images, along with Xubuntu will continue to have daily updates for the remainder of the release.”

LoCo News

SFD Tunisia 2012

Nizar Kerkeni announces the Tunisia Software Freedom Day 2012. The event “aims to spread the culture of free and open source software and its concepts, to raise awareness of free software and its virtues, and to educate the benefits of using this kind of software everywhere: in education, in government, at home, and in business.”

Local LoCo Team Portal Install

Elizabeth Krumbach writes about the low number of developers currently contributing to the LoCo Team Portal and gives instructions for how to create a virtual machine with a development version of the portal for development. Krumbach writes that it “would be great to have experienced folks pitching in.“

Launchpad News

Launchpads page performance report now reusable

Robert Collins of Launchpad writes that the “ page performance report can now be used on regular Apache log files, rather than just the zserver trace log files that Launchpad’s middle tier generates.” The code is in the dev-utils project on launchpad, and Collins shares instructions for checking it out and configuring it.

The Planet

Jonathan Riddell: Why have you stuck with Kubuntu?

Jonathan Riddell shares some comments from a Kubuntu forum thread, which asks users "Why have you stuck with Kubuntu?" Comments include preference for KDE, familiar look, compassionate community and that it “allows me to do more with fewer keystrokes or mouse clicks.”

Michael Hall: How the AppDevUploadProcess was written

Michael Hall shares some insights on how the newly proposed specification for developers to get their applications into the Software Center was created. He highlights some of the problems with the previous process and discusses how the team collaborated to put together a possible solution to fix the issues. The spec was released to the community to gain feedback and is not yet final.

James Hunt: Call for Testing: Upstart stateful re-exec

James Hunt from the Canonical Foundations Team makes a call for testing the new stateful re-exec feature that is hoped to land in Quantal. "If you'd like to help out testing the new "stateful re-exec" feature of Upstart [...], see the details in the link" Hunt says.

Ubuntu TV: Ubuntu TV Weekly Update #9

The Ubuntu TV update this week covers some of the latest developments, including work to add the Unity Preview features into the TV, and a shifted focus into fixing bugs following the feature freeze that went into effect last week.

Canonical Design Team: 12.10 wallpaper selection finalised

Canonical has announced the final wallpaper selection for 12.10. The collection includes 11 images submitted by the community. While the winning entries will be included in the 12.10 release, you can view the entire shortlist in the Flickr gallery now.

Daniel Holbach:Hanging out with Ubuntu developers

Daniel Holbach blogs about a new series of Google Hangouts where developers interested in helping to make 12.10 a great release can join to learn more about development and bug fixing. It also serves as a great way to get to know the developers a little better. Sessions start this week and will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays for anyone interested in attending.

No Quantal Beta 1 for Xubuntu

The Xubuntu team didn’t release Beta 1 this cycle citing, among the reasons, a desire to fix several important bugs and reduce the image size in order to make Beta 2 the very best possible. Despite the absence of Beta 1, daily updates will be released and Xubuntu Beta 2 will be released toward the end of the month.

Thomas Ward: Servers and PHP FPM: The New Method in Quantal

Thomas Ward writes that the PHP FPM package has been modified in both Debian and Ubuntu to listen on a UNIX socket by default, running at /var/run/php5-fpm.sock, and stresses: “Anyone upgrading to Quantal from Precise or earlier which have servers using php5-fpm assuming that it’ll continue to listen on 127.0.0.1:9000 will need to change their configurations to adapt for this change!”

Ted Gould: Desktop in the Cloud

Ted Gould details a new feature in Ubuntu 12.10 that he is excited about: the ability to log in to a remote desktop. By using the guest account feature, users can connect to their remote desktops located anywhere on the Internet. The remote desktop is integrated with your Ubuntu SSO, meaning that a user needs only to provide their SSO to be able to see a list of their available servers to connect to.

In The Press

Ubuntu made ... fun! (Book Review: Ubuntu Made Easy)

Sandra Henry-Stocker of ITWire gives a short overview of the new “Ubuntu Made Easy” book released by No Starch Press. “I would recommend this book to anyone who is starting out with Ubuntu (whether new to Linux or not) or anyone looking to get a lot more value out of his/her Ubuntu system. It's well written, easy to understand and thoroughly fun to read.”

20 Must Have Ubuntu Apps for Productivity

Matt Hartley of Datamation has a write up of 20 essential productivity applications for Ubuntu users including FocusWriter, Freeplane, gSTM, Unity Mail, Giver, Wake On Plan and Diodon clipboard, and explains “how they lend themselves to a more productive workstation environment.”

Libre Office Adds Ubuntu App Menu Support - No Plugin Needed

Joey Sneddon of OMG!Ubuntu! writes about the latest version of Libre Office and its native app menu integration. Sneddon explains the main initial reason for app menu integration was “saving the vertical space for Netbook users.”

In Other News

Ubuntu's Unity Is Also Painful For 2D Performance

Michael Larabel of Phoronix highlights that “besides the Unity desktop and Compiz window manager in Ubuntu impairing the Linux OpenGL performance, the 2D performance is also dramatically affected by this desktop configuration.” Latter is based on Phoronix benchmark tests with 2D.

Seth Colaner from HotHardware introduces us to the tiny cubieboard ARM platform, which supports Ubuntu and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. “Those who like to tinker with and build computers have a new toy to play with.”

Glossary of Terms

Ubuntu - Get Involved

The Ubuntu community consists of individuals and teams, working on different aspects of the distribution, giving advice and technical support, and helping to promote Ubuntu to a wider audience. No contribution is too small, and anyone can help. It's your chance to get in on all the community fun associated with developing and promoting Ubuntu. http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate